Silk Shading Birthday Gift and Pulled Thread Challenge

I have been waiting to post this picture, it seems like forever, until my friend in Lyon opened her Birthday gifts. Yesterday was her birthday, so now it is safe to post it since she has seen it. This is a silk shading practice project to get ready for the certificate class at the Royal School of Needlework in San Francisco next April. I still need lots of practice, but everyone has to start someplace.

The next picture is the pulled thread challenge project that I am working on with The Sampler Guild in England. Each month beginning last July we receive a block to stitch. Mine is a crazy quilt design because many of the members are also quilters, not me. I am using blue, green and yellow (yellow because my friend said it had to have yellow, and she was right) with metallic for the chain stitches between the blocks. This only four of the sections, there will be twelve, well if I get one design done and sent to England for March. I am thinking it needs to be green and circles, kind of like a shamrock. Not sure what I will do with it when it is done, could be a book or box cover? Suggestions welcome!

Haven't done a lot of stitching lately, just a little knitting!

New Sewing Room & The Story of the Broken Books

Haven't done much stitching lately, not that I don't have some I could work on, read on to see what I have been doing. Should have taken before pictures, but it was really bad and I didn't want anyone to see the room. Just imagine wall to wall book shelves, dresser, sewing cabinet, a bed and a computer desk "almost" room to walk.

We have been working on clearing out the sewing room/guest room. I have been selling lots of things on ebay and giving stuff away, there is still a lot to deal with in the garage, but we can put the car in the garage and that makes my husband happy.

We had new grey carpet installed, painted and had a wall bed (very light grey) installed. The wall bed is great, when the bed is up there is a table. I love the table I spend a lot of time using it. There are no windows in the room because it is in the basement, my husband painted the walls bright yellow, I love yellow, and it make the room much brighter too. The lady who use to live here was an artist, she used the room for her studio so the lighting is really good too.

The last picture is my sewing cabinet, a nice cozy corner of the room. The TV is on a cart with wheels to make it easy to move around.

The wall bed in the sewing room is a great way to save space, we don't have company a lot so this is a better use of the area.

I have two, well probably more, books that the bindings are broken. A friend told me that I could take them to Kinkos and have a spiral binding put on the books. They cut off the old binding and put the spiral binding on and it only cost $10.88 for both books. They are so nice I can now open the book and it will lay flat without having to hold it. This is a great thing and not too expensive either. Can you tell I am a little excited about this? Here are pictures of the books.That is enough for now . . .

Happy Thanksgiving . . . Enjoy your turkey day, we are having a Pacific Northwest Thanksgiving with lots of seafood!!

Tree with Fall Colors

A couple weeks ago we went for a walk in Seattle and saw a tree that the leaves had turned yellow and orange. I have had this tree rolling around in my head since that day. When I saw the tree I said "I could stitch that tree." Well, I finally gathered the threads and fabric and sat down a few days ago to stitch. We usually get so much rain that the leaves are on the ground and we don't get to enjoy them, but this year has been a little drier until this last week-end and now the leaves are all over the ground.

First I put a piece of 40 count linen with interfacing under it in a hoop and made sure it was very tight. Then I drew the tree on the linen with a pencil, I know what everyone is thinking that it is wrong to draw on the linen, but it works really good and will be covered up with thread so it really is O.K.

I am using all Threadworx overdyed cotton floss, one brown and three different oranges. http://threadworx.com/ The tree trunk is done with chain stitch and the leaves are fly stitch, all with one ply. The chain for the swing is Splendor silk thread by Rainbow Gallery http://www.rainbowgallery.com/colorcards.cfm

I learned that fly stitch is a great way to make leaves on a tree in the embroidery class that I took at the community center in Hampton, England. This is where I did the painted embroidery of the gardens at Hampton Court Palace and learned to use fly stitch for leaves.

The nice part of this project is I don't have to look at a pattern I can just stitch.